Portable hard drive unable to be read

[Eth]

Last night I noticed that my portable hard drive, despite the light being on suggesting it was plugged in and working, could not be read on my laptop. It popped up as an Unknown Device in the Device Manager, and in the properties for it, it says 'This device could not be read correctly. (Code 1)'

So, it is detected by my computer, but it just doesn't work like it should.

Anyone know what's wrong with it? It's a Seagate Freeagent Go, 880 GB, and it's just over a year old. I've tried it on multiple computers so it isn't an issue with my laptop, and a few Google searches haven't helped my cause. If you guys have anything to offer I'd really appreciate it - there's a lot of important stuff on here.

Cheers, guys.

 

[Conan Troutman]

I had a problem with a 2nd internal drive once, where the drive would show up in Windows, however when I clicked on it, it was unable to read it. Not sure if the same problem (can't remember if it was showing as an unknown device or not), but I used a program called TestDisk, and with that I were able to see files and copy them to another drive. Ended up my harddrive was corrupt, so I couldn't get all the files from the damaged areas, but got most of it back. Anyway, might be worth a shot with that program?

Sorry, I can't remember exactly what menu options I used, but I do remember there were a few different things that could be done, and it's probably best to read up on it or find tutorials, in case you do something which can't be reversed.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

Just a heads up too, if you can copy files (and a damaged drive is the problem), you will probably need to go through them later. For me, a lot of my mp3s were on the damaged drive, and I'm guessing right in the damaged area, as the files seemingly copied, but some were still damaged (a lot of the songs would only play partially). I've also used the same program to retrieve files of a friends damaged hard drive - and the same with theirs - some video files, it looked like they copied, but they were only partial/corrupt files IIRC. That particular drive also crashed the program with a couple of folders, so watch out for that too.

Also, I'm no expert on this at all, but IIRC from what I read at the time, there's a chance that while recovering the files, you may damage the drive further (if that is the problem with your drive), so you may want to get your most important files first (or look into if what I've said is correct).

Hope that helps. Like I said, I'm definitely no expert, but may help with something to look into at least, until someone else can help.

 

[Eth]

When that drive selecting menu comes up, I can't see the hard drive there - only the main one inside my laptop.

Thanks, though.